April 28, 2007

An Inconvenient Tree

This month's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences should make warm reading for Al Gore.

The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed April 14 2007

By Russell Seitz A report that just came online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences should make warm reading for Al Gore. The Former Next President, like many black clad greens gracing the cover of Vanity Fair , relies on firms that promise to plant trees to offset their clients' fuel intensive lifestyles , allowing the affluent to ignore their effluence and claim to be CO2 free. Al also points to windmills and other energy alternatives when pleading carbon-neutral to charges he's hardly innocent of global warming.

But where do Al Gore's green woodlands grow? Canada? Scotland? Patagonia? Alaska? Siberia? Does he really know? Carbon offsets are sold by the ton, not by the acre, and don't come with return addresses.

He'd better find out--before Earth Day. The research reported by Govindasamy Bala of Lawrence Livermore National laboratory and colleagues at the Carnegie Institute of Global Ecology compared the climate effects of planting and clearing forests at latitudes high and low. Their computer simulations yielded some disturbing results.

Since 1997, the "Tree Canada Foundation has been responsible for the planting of 3,298,607 trees in Northeastern Ontario , an achievement its website advertises " Tree Canada is very proud to be associated with " Reading the PNAS paper could thaw some Greens agreement.

Saving the tropical rain forest is well and good, for cutting down
trees in the tropics means less long-term water transfer from soils to
the atmosphere, leading to fewer clouds and a warmer planet. But
planting trees where none exist in northern areas may actually hasten
global warming. Northern tree plantations can trap heat -- they both
absorb solar energy and shade sun reflecting snow. This, say the
scientists, can apparently overpower the cooling effects of trees
soaking up carbon dioxide and storing carbon in growing biomass. Take
away the trees in the long-running climate model, and high latitude
areas become 0.8° Celsius cooler by the year 2100, when compared to a
standard model of North Woods forest density.

Atmospheric scientist Bala of Lawrence Livermore says on the other
hand that tropical reforestation efforts could slow global warming--
low latitude regions that the model left treeless until 2100
increased in average temperature by 0.7° C. That's a warming trend as
large as the planet saw in the 20th Century, and could send the tree
line still farther north.

Climate scientist Victor Brovkin of Germany's Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact Research told Science magazine , which is edited by
Al's pal Donald Kennedy, former president of Stanford , that while
the new study serves as an important warning against planting trees in
the far north, planting trees in temperate regions probably has little
or no net effect on warming. Comparing models of reforestation and
deforestation of areas in the temperate zone shows temperatures
shifting just 0.04 degrees C. -- an impact even smaller than the
predicted .07 degree effect of the Kyoto treaty. So Al can't very
well wag a finger at that hatchet-wielding Arbor Day delinquent,
George Washington, for chopping the Little Ice Age down in its prime,
or snip at the energetic brush cutting of President's Bush and Reagan.

The inconvenient truth-- that ill-placed "carbon offset"
reforestation schemes can backfire could give rise to a legal climate
of fear. Will environmental lawyers chasing tree surgeon's ambulances
become the Next Big Thing in torts? The climate modeling game, affords
few certainties, but it seems likely that Carbon-Offset lawsuits will
sprout like kudzu from this fertile new research field. As it grows,
will the green state attorney Generals who took the EPA to Supreme
Court end up inviting the Former Next President back for an encore?

Russell Seitz used to own 25 acres of Christmas trees in Maine.He
lives in Cambridge Massachusetts and blogs at Adamant.typepad.comCopyright Dow Jones 2007, all rights reserved